


Infamy Has Its Perks

by BlackBlood1872



Category: inFAMOUS (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Good Karma Cole MacGrath, Humor, POV First Person, POV Third Person, idk mate i wrote these 5 years ago i'm not gonna edit that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24692194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBlood1872/pseuds/BlackBlood1872
Summary: Random moments in the life of Cole MacGrath, now that Empire City has gone to shit.[ficlet collection, mostly written in 2015 with some edits in 2020]
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Flight

**Author's Note:**

> I started thinking about this game recently and remembered I'd written all of these little things. Figured I'd finally post them!  
> This is complete cuz until I play the game again, I probably won't write any more.  
> Despite the title, this mostly follows the Good Karma run (cuz that's how I ended up playing it). I just really liked this title XD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cole learns how to fly. Or something very close to it.

When Cole was young, he wanted to fly. Yeah, ridiculous, right? Human's can't fly, and his parents told him that. "Maybe you could learn how to be a pilot," his mother said once.

Cole had frowned, and huffed like every eight year old could, and told them he _was_ going to fly one day. His parents had laughed at the time, and eventually the matter had been forgotten.

He became a bike messenger, to his mother's shame, and learned free running, parkour, whatever you wanted to call it. Leaping between rooftops and flipping through the air—it was close. But it wasn't flying.

Then the blast happened. His body changed, crackled with electricity, and he could survive more. Falls didn't hurt, and even if he missed that roof, he could light himself up like an electric meteor and absorb the landing.

Free fall was amazing. Cole found himself anticipating his failed leaps, the times when he'd misjudged a distance (or had he?) and there was nothing to grab as the ground came up to meet him.

But it still wasn't flying.

Until he made it to the Warren, until the lack of power drove him to the sewers and he reconnected the circuit, electrocuted his system into overdrive, and learned something _new_.

"Oh hell yes," Cole breathed, eyes lighting and a mad grin stretching his cheeks further than they had since the start of the Quarantine. His heart felt like it was trying to escape his rib cage, and he didn't know if it was because of the recent surge, or the excitement welling up inside him.

He flexed his hands, sparks dancing around his fingers, coating his hands. He scanned the sewer ahead of him, and smirked when the only platform he could see was too far for him to jump to.

Not anymore. Because now he could _fly_.

Something that could have been a giggle escaped past his teeth and Cole ran, leaping off the platform and watching as the deadly water neared—

Then whooped when the magnetic field generating from his hands pushed him up, further, and he rolled to a crouch on that metal grating. He flopped to his back with another laugh, and couldn't stop grinning.

When he finally got back to the roof and collapsed on their only couch, Zeke stared him down and asked, very seriously: "Are you high?"

Cole just laughed.


	2. Chapter 2

Showers were nightmares now.

Cole listened to Zeke complain over the current lack of running water, and how he had to go to such demeaning lows to get clean and Cole just. He hadn't really thought about it. Showers were a luxury now, with the quarantine and the reapers and all the other shit happening since the blast. Everyone stank, and scrubbing off the layers of dirt that kept you warm at night wasn't that high on anyone's list, especially when they didn't know if they'd even live through the night.

But when the quarantine was over, when the Reapers were gone, when life went back to normal... what would he do? Water was a death sentence for him now, and he suspected the panic he felt even going near the edge of the city (never mind swinging under the bridge, or navigating the sewers, or skirting around the park fountains) was from newly acquired aquaphobia.

"Zeke," he said suddenly, cutting the man off mid-tirade. Zeke blinked and Cole sent him a vaguely horrified look. "I can't have showers," he said, and it took a minute, but Zeke got it. He groaned and leaned his head against the back of the couch.

"Oh _man_ ," he choked out, and it was half laugh, half _you are in so much shit_.

Yeah, well, fuck you too, Zeke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon: the wiki says that Cole has to sponge bathe to avoid death by bathwater.


	3. Field Medic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's what friends do, isn't it? Help each other out. Even if that means learning how to treat bullet wounds.

Two months into the Quarantine, Zeke became a master at battlefield medicine. He had to, with a roof-flat roommate like Cole.

Electricity, the man could survive like _nothing_. Electrocutions? Just a tingle, and it made him feel all hyped up. Bullets? Not quite as fatal as they used to be, but they still _hurt_.

Zeke lost count of how many times Cole pulled himself onto their roof with shaking limbs because he had a bullet or five lodged in them, and his clothes were singed from the gunfire and plenty of stray sparks, because while he was immune to the element, his clothes certainly weren't. Zeke also lost count of how many times Cole assured him he was _fine_ , he just needed to rest. Preferably with his finger in a light socket.

Zeke lost count of how many times he had to wait until Cole was unconscious to start plucking out the bullets. Water toasted the man now, but when he was knocked out, he seemed to go into the same hibernation mode as a laptop, and he only twitched when Zeke washed out the wounds or dribbled alcohol on them to disinfect. He grew accustomed to dodging the stray sparks that leapt from the wounds, and learned just how much liquid Cole could handle before he looked visibly pained.

When the city library was liberated from the Reapers, Zeke spent a lot of his time there, researching medicine and everything he'd need to keep his friend alive a little longer.

Cole probably noticed. But he never pointed it out, and just stayed silent when Zeke dug out his mix-match first aid kit and started sewing him back together.


	4. Trish

"Hey Cole!" Trish calls, waving with a happier smile than I've seen in months. "We're going to the beach! Wanna come?"

My insides feel like they've just turned to ice and panic surges in me. I ruthlessly push it down, hopefully before anyone notices. "I... I'll have to pass," I tell her.

Something flashes in her eyes, then she pouts and looks like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. "Come _on_ , Cole, you _love_ the beach."

Maybe I did, back before all this shit with the Ray Sphere happened. "I really can't," I press, and two of the women in her group give me weird looks. The man standing next to them whispers something, and their expressions change to shock, understanding, and the usual fear. I sigh.

"Cole, stop being such an ass!" Trish growls, and her happy expression is once again gone. Because of me. As usual.

"I _really can't go_ ," I growl right back. "If I get anywhere near the water, _I will die_."

Trish scoffs, "Yeah right."

Which is Trishese for "I have forcibly forgotten that you're now a walking light socket".

I stare at her flatly, then employ one of my new absent habits—tossing joltstreams of electricity between my hands. The group behind Trish breaks out into murmurs, and I hear at least one "he's the Electric Man". Trish's face goes white.

"Yeah," I deadpan. I condense the lightning in my hands into a ball and toss it into the air where it explodes in a shower of mostly-harmless sparks.

Then I turn and walk away, feeling sick. Trish is never going to change. I don't know why I ever thought she would.


	5. Defibrillator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Cole, part 1.  
> There are some patients that can't be helped with a quick shock.

Sometimes, when I can't handle Zeke and his whining, I camp out at the nearest medical centre instead of going back to the roof. I'm pretty sure the EMTs don't like that, but they have a cot set up with my name clipped to it, so they can't really complain.

Still though. I try to help them out as much as I can, to ease the guilt. Ever since I got the power back to the Neon district, I've become somewhat of a glorified defibrillator, making a charge between my hands and shocking a person back to health. I've also become somewhat of a nerve specialist, since I can sense the tiny sparks that run through humans naturally. My defibrillator act is just clearing any blockages in those nerve endings, and bringing the levels back up again.

No one actually knows that, and I'm only guessing with that whole theory, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that this helps people, maybe even more than fighting the Reapers and Dust Men.

Until one day, when I charge myself up and go to shock a guy in his fifties maybe. Dunno how he's lived so long in this hell, but he looks hardy enough that I figure maybe he's a retired cop and knows how to get by.

No matter who he is, I go to shock him and stop just inches from his chest. Something _pings_ off the radar I use almost constantly now and it makes me pull away like I've been burned. The EMT hovering near me as I heal all his patients frowns severely.

"What are you waiting for?" he demands, only just in the range of friendly. A decibel lower and he would have been hostile.

I take a step back, the built up electricity dispersing into the air. "I can't help him," I say with a shake of my head and a grimace. The EMT scowls harder, and leans over to examine the man.

A minute later and the EMT makes a sound deep in his throat. "Oh. Yeah. Probably best not to shock him."

Because this guy has a pace-maker, and those _do not_ respond well to sudden lightning.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Cole, part 2.

One day, as I'm healing people groaning on the streets, I come across a woman curled up in a puddle.

It's probably one of the most embarrassing thing to happen to me, never mind _her_. A few people in the crowd that started following me some two corners back start murmuring in concern. One even calls out the helpful suggestion of "Help her already!"

"Could, uh," I stutter, and really wish I could go hide somewhere. My face heats and I hope no one notices. "Can someone get her out of the water?"

"Why can't you do that?" probably the same guy from before growls. I scan the crowd and stare flatly at the glaring man in the second row.

"What happens," I ask him, slow and in the low voice I save for dealing with idiots, "when you put a live wire in a puddle?"

He actually considers it, and I can almost see him playing it out in his head. A moment later, his glare drops and he looks kind of sick. I bare my teeth at him in what could be termed a smile if you were blind. "Yeah. So could you help a little? I really don't want to fry her."

"Right, yeah," the guy mutters, and rushes to drag the woman onto dry cement.

After that, it's easy to get her up and moving, and I nod to her with a tiny smile.

The idiot, a quick scan discovers, is nowhere to be found.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Cole, part 3.

He doesn't know when it started, but one day as he's leaving the newly healed up medical centre, someone calls "Thanks doctor Cole!"

Cole misses a step and nearly beans himself on the street light in front of him. He glances back at the centre with wide eyes, but all the people have cleared away and it's empty but for the lone EMT checking his supplies.

Zeke, the bastard, laughs himself silly when Cole tells him that night.

Cole, in turn, ignores the man's cursing when he zaps him like he has a few Reapers, cuffing his wrists to the floor.


End file.
